i drink alone (to stop the weeping)
by saltzmans
Summary: In Mystic Falls nightcaps seem to be everybody's favourite remedy for dealing with small town vampires—one shot; character analysis.


**notes** | this is a belated birthday present to elzy — i thought it was rather amusing to combine our three favourite things...i love you lots xoxo

**warnings **| very non linear; lots of reference to alcohol; quite a few swears.

* * *

—**caroline forbes & klaus mikealson**—

Caroline is drunk, sad and angry which is never really a good combination when it comes to her because all she wants to do is drink, throw something at the wall and curl up into a ball and cry.

In the end she does all three because she thinks it has gotten to the point where she deserves to be allowed to whinge and sob about her life and get heartbreakingly drunk – it's not every day ones good for nothing hybrid boyfriend decides that killing a man – if you could really call Klaus that – comes above their relationship.

No.

She's not going to think about Tyler – or Klaus, for that matter. Caroline's been fucked around by men and their stupid ass egos for long enough; instead tonight she's going to get drunk and watch rom-coms and in fall in love with fictional characters because they were always going to be there and at least then they couldn't disappoint her.

But then life has always had an irritating way of going down completely down the wrong path for Caroline – kind of like the way she got turned into a vampire, stuck at the useless age of seventeen for the rest of her life and kept falling in love with the wrong guys – so when there's a knock at the door, Caroline is half tempted to ignore it but then she remembers she lives in fucking Mystic Falls and one of her stupid friends have probably gotten their memories wiped by an ancient crazy ass witch so with much groaning, Caroline heaves herself to the door.

When she opens it, her first instinct is to slam it shut but alcohol has numbed her senses and Klaus slips his foot in the gap so all she succeeds in doing is crushing his foot which doesn't even elicit a wince from the hybrid.

Suddenly Caroline rather hates her past self for getting bitten by a fucking werewolf and having to let Klaus into her house to be cured.

"What do you want?" She asks aggressively because vodka makes one do stupid things like shout at a murderous one thousand year old vampire. "Last thing I heard you were sleeping with that wolf-girl in New Orleans."

Klaus looks mildly amused. "It seems Hayley has taken rather a shine to my brother."

"Ah, well, I thought things must have ended badly with him and everyone's least favourite dopplegänger; you know, because she's a human now and possibly dying of five hundred years of bitterness. Most of which was caused by you, come to think about it."

"It seems we have a lot to catch up on," Klaus says and there's the familiar teasing glint in the back of his eyes and it makes Caroline forget her vow to renounce all men, just a little bit. "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

"You could always walk in," Caroline replies. "It's not like anything is stopping you."

"I do like to retain the long forgotten habit of manners, love," Klaus says.

Twisting the neck of the bottle in her hands, Caroline studies Klaus; she knows that if she tells him to sod off he probably would but she's missed him – in an odd kind of way – even though he's fucked over her relationship and about a thousand other things in her life.

"Fine," she responds finally, standing aside to let Klaus pass and there's a light mix of regret, acceptance and relief settling through the negative buzz the alcohol has scribbled through her body. "But you're watching Love Actually with me."

* * *

—**stefan salvatore**—

If being locked in a box for three months and subjected to drowning over and over again isn't an excuse for stone cold piss drunk, then Stefan decides Klaus Mikealson is a grass eating Vegan.

Which is to say, of course, that his excuse is the most plausible of them all. Because not even the strongest of scotches can make Stefan forget the cold water pressing around him; the empty helplessness which seems to grip him even now and the nightmares which keep him tossing in turning in bed, tearing holes through his sheets.

The Salvatore sitting room is warmer than the rest of the house – an echo of a fire crumbling in the hearth – as Stefan pours himself a glass of Damon's favourite bourbon. He's got to find some way to piss his brother off every now and again, right?

The spirits burn the back of his throat but the sharpness makes him feel awake – more alert, more like himself – so with the glass still in his hand, Stefan creeps through the back door and up onto the roof.

Mystic Falls looks like a fairytale town at dawn. Nothing has changed since Stefan was eighteen and his heart was still beating and he feels an odd twinge of nostalgia for the time before vampires and doppelgängers and ridiculous love triangles.

Atop the peaks of the trees, deep in the heart of the forest, the new light mixes with the darkness, the stars fading to nothingness as the sun begins its ascent and Stefan can't help but think in this big world full of endless people and opportunities how easy it would be to run away from everyone and everything; how much easier that would be.

But as much as he hates it and easy it the idea of running away seems to be, the reality is harder because there's something keeping him here; something that's a little bit like promises and family and regret.

Something that's a little bit like trying to finally find his happy ending.

So, Stefan watches until the night has vanished completely, and his glass empty but his chest feels a little less hollow, and his head a little less heavy and he decides to keep going until one day the night doesn't give in completely to the day.

* * *

—**alaric saltzman**—

It's a mixture of self-loathing that burns at the pit of his stomach and an incurable ache which can only be described as missing Jenna which leads Alaric to get stone cold drunk at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday night.

It's not as if drinking isn't particularly new to him – hell, if anything it's the one thing which has remained constant through the sky-high ups and bottomless downs which are all his life seems to consist of anymore but tonight it feels different.

Tonight it's been exactly six months since Jenna...he can't even bring himself to admit it; to say the words out loud because it just hurts to goddamn much, so that the only thing that comes close to blocking out the pain is a glass (or maybe two or three or ten) of bourbon on a weeknight and crying into pillows so no one else will see him hurt.

Alaric's still wary around Elena and Jeremy because they've lost so much and he's just the vampire hunter who dated their aunt and now sleeps on their sofa and they shouldn't be letting him stay. He's nothing to them – he drinks away their liquor and cries late at night when he can pretend no one is listening but really, everyone knows how thin the walls are – but still they accept him; they go so far as to protect him and it kills him.

Sometimes he just lies there, on the sofa which has become his sanctum, empty bottle swinging from his loose grip, and Alaric remembers Jenna. He remembers the way she used to look at him; like he was the only person worth doing anything for, worth being anybody for. He remembers the way she used to hold him at night when the sky was dark and empty and crushed him and Alaric cried out against the demons which plagued him.

Alaric remembers Jenna – when he's drunk and sad and lonely on a Tuesday night – he remembers the best of the woman he fell in love with; the person she brought out in him so when he awakes the next morning with a headache which could fell an ox, the emptiness in his stomach has receded and although he still misses her with everything in him, the sadness and the loneliness are just a little bit less.

* * *

—**damon salvatore & elena gilbert**—

She's curled up on the sofa with a half empty bottle of wine which someone opened earlier that day, and a book Damon finds her at two o'clock in the morning after waking up to an empty bed and a body covered in cold sweat because Damon's been having nightmares of late – nightmares where he's wandering down an endless corridor and it's dark and he's so alone and the only thing that he can think about is how far away Elena feels.

Things have been far too messed up recently for his liking but Damon's suppose it was stupid to have thought that anything could have gone well as soon as he and Elena finally found their little slice of solitude. Life in Mystic Falls was far too unpredictable for that.

"Hey," he calls softly from the doorway. "What're you reading?"

Elena looks up from her book and a smile manages to slide onto her face; it's a sad kind of smile but with all that has happened, Damon  
decides that it'll do just fine for now.

"Dracula. I did it for AP English a couple of years ago and I remember thinking it was complete bullshit, but now look at us both." Elena lets lose her fangs a little and bares her teeth; they both laugh because in light of the things irony is rather beautiful and it's been a while since they laughed together like that.

"You know it's based on me," Damon tells her, settling down on the sofa next to her and taking a swig of her wine. "Bram Stoker had rather an infatuation with me, I'm afraid to say."

Elena snatches the bottle back but the smile on her lips is growing. "Now that's bullshit," she says, rest her head against the curve of his side. "You're too full of yourself."

"Your faith in me is heartbreaking," Damon replies. "But no, quite a lot of Vampire Fiction is based on me, y'know. Twilight and the like."

"I've seen you naked, Damon," Elena says. "And I can verify that you most definitely do not sparkle."

"Ah," Damon shoots back dramatically flourishing the bottle in the air. "But I do burn up in the sun – Meyer may have reduced the gore for the teen audiences."

Elena smiles up at him. "You're ridiculous."

"I love you," Damon replies and Elena moves closer against Damon, her head resting on his chest and they stay like that, until the the sun begins to move above the horizon and the new day is upon them.

* * *

—**the originals**—

It's been a while since the three of them have been in the same room together without ripping each others throats out or Klaus sticking his goddamn daggers in everybody; it's been a long time since they've been together as a family of a night but as it so happens, as the three of them sit lounge across various furniture in the living room, it's rather nice.

Initially it begins as a celebratory drink – something about Rebekah finally sorting out one string of her messy, tangled, hopeless love life and deciding she wanted to get drunk – and Elijah had bought out a dusty bottle of wine from the cellar.

"To Rebekah," he says, a slight smile on his lips as he hands a glass to his sister. "And whoever's heart she's broken."

"Oh, I daresay it will be my heart broken in the end, Elijah," she replies.

"But then I'll have to break his heart," Klaus concludes striding into the room. "Who's the new boyfriend, 'Bekah?"

"If I told you that you'd rip out his heart before I had any fun." Rebekah takes a sip of her wine. "And it's far more amusing watching you struggling over the corruption of your little sister."

"I think we all stopped worrying about your purity a long time ago," Klaus mocks accepting a glass from Elijah who's rolling his eyes at his siblings.

"That's a bit rich coming from he-who-knocked-up-a-werewolf."

Klaus bears his fangs casually as he raises his glass to his lips; a sharp canine takes a chip out of its rim.

"Can't we ever sit down as a family without all this bickering?" Elijah asks exasperatedly.

"I think that rather defeats the point of our family," Klaus shoots back with a half smile.

"Always and forever," Rebekah reminds them, raising her glass, and her smile is light and it reminds Elijah a little of a human girl who dreamt of adventure and paradise and falling in love. "With the occasional century long stabbing," she adds on an after thought.

"Always and forever," Klaus agrees.

It's takes Elijah a moment to respond even though he's always been the one who pushes the family together it's a slight shock the the system to see them acting like one after all this time but in the end he two raises his glass.

"Always and forever."

* * *

—**katherine pierce**—

She's only ever really known two things: running and hiding, and they're things which take a lot from a person. And now she's human and she's weak and helpless, Katherine finds breaking into the Salvatore alcohol supply one hundred percent justifiable.

What's a bottle of wine among friends, eh?

It's strange thinking of the Salvatore's as friends because she's never really made any proper connections until the Salvatore and Katherine's still not entirely sure the one hundred and something years in between turning them and reappearing to tell them she wasn't dead counts as making a connection.

But now she's not running anymore – she got her goddamn freedom from Klaus – but she's human and for some reason she's still stuck in Mystic Falls drinking wine that isn't hers and dying without really having seen anything or met anyone.

And the fact that the news that she was dying had came as a shock to Katherine made it worse. She's never been anything but strong and then all of a sudden her hair is greying, her teeth falling out and it sucks because she's always presumed she had all the time in the world but now all she has left was a fraction of her life.

But the worst thing is that in all of her years running – although she had been do the busiest and most desolate corners of the earth and seen things most people would die for – she hasn't really stopped to appreciate anything.

Which is why – fuelled by drink and a ceaseless regret – Katherine takes a bus; she leaves Mystic Falls behind and hits the open road because whatever happens – whether she's human or vampire – she's Katherine Pierce and Katherine Pierce is a survivor and in the end who she is is all Katherine has left.

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_please don't favourite without leaving a review._


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